Chapter 1 Effectiveness Can Be Learned

  • Manual work is about doing things right. Knowledge work is about doing the right thing
  • Knowledge worker (KWer) can not be supervised in detail. He has to direct himself
  • KWer must make deicsions and live by its result. He should be the best person to make the call
  • KW is defined by its result, NOT costs or quantity
  • KW cann’t let events direct his action for too long - he will be operating
  • Insight the org it is all about effort and cost - even for profit center
  • One tends to be drawn into the challenges inside the org, instead of events to the outside.
  • By the time revelent outside events becomes measureable it is too late, because being able to measure the event means one has to build concept first
  • Change in trends is more important than trend itself, but they can only be preceived rather than counted.
  • Don’t need to know the detail of your collaborationer’s work, but need to know why it is there and what is happening
  • Ask the expected result instead of work to be done
  • Effective decision is based on dissenting opinions rather than concensus on the facts

Chapter 2 Know Thy Time

  • Plan with time rather than work. Consolidate them into the larget possible chunks
  • Need to spend much time with people to get idea across
  • Fast personnel decision is likely to be wrong decisions. Make them several times before committing - need hours of continous and uninterrrupted thoughts
  • Cutting important things by mistake is easy to correct
  • 90 mins continous work + 30 mins interruptive work
  • Schedule morning work period at home. This is better than after dinner because people will be too tired to do a good job

Chapter 3 What Can I Contribute?

  • Contribution is importatnt in all 3 areas: direct result, building of the people, building of the value
  • Justify the payroll based on contribution rather than effort
  • Doing a job well means he is specialized, which also means retooling when moving to a new position

Chapter 4 Making Strength Productive

  • Fill the position by strength rather than weakness. If weakness is blocking the strength, fix it by work or career oppurtunities
  • Build job by task rather than personality,i.e., don’t create job for a person
  • Indispensible man means, at one of
  • he is incompetent to he shields himself from demands
  • the superior is weak
  • his strength is misused to delay tackling a serious problem, if not hiding it
  • Rapidly promoted superior easier to lead success. A un-performing superior only means new one will be brought from outside
  • Help boss overcome limitation and use his strength. Present with area related to his strength first, to help him understand the situation
  • Listening or reading - people have different preference in receiving info
  • Easier to raise the performance of 1 leader instead of the mass. He should be put into performance-making, standard-setting position
  • Claiming the lack of authority/access is often a cover-up for inertia

Chapter 5 First Things First

  • Double buffering of work could work on condition each is given a min amount of continous time
  • Yesterday’s success always lingers longer than the productive life
  • Pressure driven prioritization means focusing on yesterday instead of tomorrow, inside rather than outside, i.e., urgent tasks pushs back important ones
  • Reprioritization at the end of each task

Chapter 6 The Elements of Decision-making

  • Focus on what is “right”, i.e., satisfies specs, before worrying about compromises and concessions. Stakeholders know how to make compromise better than you, but they need your help figuring out what is right
  • Incomplete explanation is often more dangerous than the totally wrong explanation
  • an executive who makes many decisions is both lazy and ineffectual, because he failed to see the truly generic problems

Chapter 7 Effective Decisions

  • Most likely a choice between two courses neither is more provably nearly right than the other
  • Fact requires criteria for relevance
  • Effective decisions grow out of clash of divergent opinions and competing alternatives. In fact, one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement
  • whoever voices the opinion should be responsible for the factual findings
  • Find the measurment is more about risk-taking judgement, since it is a judgement, alternatives measurements must be considered too
  • Measurements sound on paper is still meaningless if you can’t convert to step-to-step guide for a computer
  • Act if on balance the benefits greatly outweigh cost and risk; and Act or do not act; but do not “hedge” or compromise.